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An Ode to Half-Pint: Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder

“I began to think what a wonderful childhood I had had. How I had seen
the whole frontier, the woods, the Indian country of the great plains, the
frontier towns, the building of railroads in wild, unsettled country,
homesteading and farmers coming in to take possession…Then I understood that in my own life I represented
a whole period of American history”Laura Ingalls Wilder speaking at a Detroit Book Fair in 1937

Preface

Laura Ingalls Wilder was a Missouri farm woman with
virtually no publication experience writing her first book. She was a lovely,
white haired fragile appearing woman who drew on her wealth of memories to
produce classic books for young Americans. As she published book after book, eight during
her lifetime, the legend flourished .Wilder herself, consciously or unconsciously, contributed to it. In 1949
a reporter asked her what advice she would give young writers, she replied, “I hardly feel competent to do that, for
all I did was write what happened to me.” She wrote her early drafts on wide-lined
school tablets which only added charm and credibility to her story. Her
description of her writing process, “After
I would write something I would set it back for a month or so and let it cool.
Then I would read it back and maybe change it a little before I sent it in.” Laura
Ingalls Wilder wrote in isolation from her remote Ozark farm. She wrote in
collaboration with her editor and daughter Rose Wilder Lane, helping her books
evolve and deepen as her skills as a novelist matured. Her writing ambitions dated from her
adolescence in the Dakota Territory when she began writing poems which she kept
and eventually inserted into The Happy
GoldenYears.She served a lengthy
apprenticeship as a farm journalist and grappled with her daughter’s advice to
write for adult markets and not children. Ultimately, Wilder faced the trials
and tribulations of most American novelists as they struggle to find their
voices, their publishers, and their readers.Wilder grew creatively, learning from her daughter, her editors at
Harpers & Brothers, her agent, and ultimately from herself. Her emergence
as a novelist revealed her commitment and passion to the craft of writing
fiction.

Rose Wilder Lane, daughter of Almanzo and Laura Ingalls Wilder

The fiction of Laura Ingalls Wilder clearly autobiographical
in nature, demonstrating her emerging understanding of story: conflict,
character, plot, dialogue, description, narrative, and theme all bound together
with her love of family, the prairies of the Middle Border and the West.

The greater truth of fiction, the satisfying arc of a good
story is what interested Wilder far more than the precise details of her own
past. The facts she embellished, changed, and eliminated from her family’s
history, her own life, transformed the real Laura Elizabeth Ingalls, the girl
born to Charles and Caroline Ingalls on February 7, 1867, into the fictional
Laura Ingalls, an immortal character in American children’s literature, born in
1932 when Harper & Brothers released Little
House in the Big Woods.

Laura Elizabeth Ingalls was born on February
7, 1867, the second daughter of Charles and Caroline Ingalls, in the Big Woods
of Wisconsin, seven miles north of Pepin. In 1868, Pa and Ma (as Laura would
later call her parents) took baby Laura and her sister Mary, age three, from
the Big Woods to Chariton County, Missouri. The family did not stay in Missouri
long. Inspired by the Homestead Act of 1862 which offered 160 acres of
"free land" to settlers who would farm and live on it for five years,
Pa took his family to the prairies. The land Pa chose was about 12 miles from
Independence, Kansas, within the boundaries of the Osage Diminished Reserve.There Pa built a house and stable
with the help of a neighbor, Mr. Edwards. Later, the family contracted malaria
and were fortunate that Dr Tann, who was actually a doctor to the Indians, was
in the area. After building a house and planting crops, the Ingalls family was
forced to leave in the fall of 1870, just after the birth of their third
daughter, Carrie. Pa heard that the government had changed their minds about
opening the land for homesteading and that soldiers were on their way to force
the settlers out. Pa did not wait for the soldiers. He
took his family to their old home in the Big Woods. This enabled the girls to
see more of their grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Laura and Mary attended the
Barry Corner School, and spent many happy hours playing with their cousins. Ma
was glad to be home, but Pa longed to go west again.

In 1874, the Ingalls journeyed west,
trading for a small farm near Walnut Grove, Minnesota. The family lived in a
dugout in the creek bank until Pa could build a wonderful new house made of
sawed boards. In Walnut Grove, the family joined the church pastored by Rev.
Alden and Laura and Mary were able to attend school again. It was here that
Laura met the snobby and cruel Nellie Owens.

Pa raised a wonderful wheat crop,
and the family felt that surely this was the end of their troubles. However,
grasshoppers invaded the area and destroyed all the crops. The family tried
again the next year to raise a crop, but the grasshopper eggs left the previous
year hatched and destroyed the crops again.

On November 1, 1875, a son was born
to the Ingalls family, Charles Frederic. The following summer, the family
traveled to Uncle Peter's farm in eastern Minnesota, where Pa helped with the
harvesting. While there, baby Freddy became ill, and died on August 27, 1876. The
family, saddened at the loss of their son, moved on to Burr Oak, Iowa, where
Pa's friend Mr. Steadman had purchased a hotel. The family lived in the hotel,
and Ma and Pa helped the Steadman’s manage it. They did not like the work, and
moved first to some rented rooms over a grocery, and then to a little brick
house outside of town.

The family's last child, Grace, was
born in Burr Oak on May 23, 1877. The family was homesick for their friends in
Walnut Grove, so they returned in the summer of 1877 to live in town while
Charles did carpentry and other odd jobs, and opened a butcher shop.

Laura and Mary were eager to find
out what had happened in Walnut Grove while they were away. They found that
Nellie Owens now had a rival, Genevieve Masters, the school teacher's daughter.
Nellie and Genny fought for the leadership of the girls but it was Laura who
became the leader, without even trying.

In 1879, Mary suffered a stroke and
lost her eyesight. In that same year the Ingalls family made their final move
when Aunt Docia from the Big Woods arrived and offered Pa a job as a railroad
manager in Dakota Territory. When the railway work moved on, the Ingalls family
stayed. Together with their friends, the Boasts, they became the first
residents of the new town of De Smet, South Dakota. Pa and Laura would have
happily gone further west but Ma insisted that they stay put so that the girls
could get an education. Pa filed a claim on 160 acres of land 3 miles southeast
of De Smet. The Hard Winter of 1880-81 resulted in almost continuous blizzards
from October to the following May. The blizzards made it all but impossible to
travel in or out, and trains could not run to bring in supplies.

By late 1881, the family had saved
up enough money to send Mary to the blind school at Vinton, Iowa. The
government supplied the money for her tuition, but Ma and Pa had to pay for
transportation to and from the school, and for suitable clothes for a young
college girl.

As a teenager Laura had become
rather a shy girl and initially found it difficult to mix with people. She
seemed quite fearful of crowds. Laura worked hard at school and showed a great
interest in English, history and poetry. Unfortunately, Genevieve Masters had
arrived in De Smet and along with the teacher, Eliza Jane Wilder, began to
cause trouble for Laura. However Miss Wilder left the school and Laura was able
to become top of her class.

At the early age of 15, Laura earned
her teaching certificate. She was hired by the Bouchie School, 12 miles away,
and boarded with the Bouchie family. Mrs. Bouchie was apparently going through
a mental breakdown due to the isolation of the settlement, and Laura was
frightened of her. She was therefore very grateful when a young man, Almanzo
Wilder, a local farmer and brother of her old teacher, offered to drive his
sleigh through howling gales and freezing temperatures each weekend to bring
her home. At first Laura thought Almanzo was doing it only as a favor to Pa.
Over the next three years, however, she gradually allowed Almanzo into her
affections and they married on August 25, 1885.

Their daughter Rose was born
December 5, 1886, but the farming life was no easier for the newly married couple
than it had been for Laura's father and mother. Droughts and hail storms ruined
crops and kept them in debt. Diphtheria and overwork led to Almanzo being
crippled. Their second child, a baby boy, died unnamed soon after his birth in
August 1889. An accident in the kitchen resulted in their house burning down.

Laura around 1917.
Photo courtesy of Herbert Hoover Presidential Library.
Used with permission.

Almanzo and Laura left De Smet to
live with Almanzo's parents in Spring Valley, Minnesota, but the weather did
not help Almanzo's health. They moved to Westville, Florida, where Laura's
cousin Peter had made his home. Almanzo's health improved, but Laura could
not take the heat, and the women did not accept her socially because she was
a "Yankee". In 1892, Almanzo, Laura, and little Rose returned to De
Smet, where Rose began her schooling although she was young, and Laura and
Almanzo worked and saved up money to make a fresh start.

On July 17, 1894, the Wilders left
South Dakota again. This time, they traveled to Mansfield in the Ozarks of
Missouri. They arrived on August 30, and purchased Rocky Ridge Farm. The
house began as a small log cabin, but Laura and Almanzo added to it over the
years, until it became the large rambling farmhouse that it is today.

Almanzo died on October 23, 1949, at the age of 92. Laura
died on February 10, 1957, at Rocky Ridge Farm at the age of 90. Laura is
buried in Mansfield, Missouri with her husband and only daughter Rose Wilder
Lane.

Laura and Almanzo wedding 1885

Laura and Almanzo 1940s

This is my personal childhood set of books I read as a child, circa 1979, I still have them proudly on my shelf!

SOURCES

Laura Ingalls Wilder
Country: The People and places in Laura Ingalls Wilder's life and books By
William Anderson, 1990, Harper Collins

Comments

This is wonderful. I too grew up reading the books and watching the tv show. I've always wanted to know more about her life and what her family looked like. So many memories came back reading your article that is obviously special to you, Kimberly.

Thanks for a very informative article. It really brings out how hard life was for people on the frontiers in those pioneering days. I used to love the TV series as a child. I can still remember the way the father would shout "Half-pint!" Incidentally this was the only western TV show to remain on Iranian TV after the Ayatollahs took over!

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